2008 Salinas Airshow

F-15 On Reheat

Not really hard to figure that I was a) somewhere local (sunny) and b) there were aeroplanes involved. Yes, I spent the day at the 2008 Salinas Airshow, roughly 60 miles south of here. It was a sunny but not too hot day, but held in a location with very little shade. Of course, I took every precaution in terms of getting out the sunscreen, but that was somewhat negated by then forgetting the vital step of actually taking it with me in the car. Yes, I got burned, and yes, it hurt.

Salinas is a bigger airport than I ever knew and is ideally located in the Salinas valley. On problem is it has a fairly short runway, at least by commercial standards, so a couple of the aircraft flying-in had to be staged over in Monterey instead. Therefore, the static display was limited. The airborne display also a bit limited - and perhaps this was just peculiar to this year- in the sense that there were several F-15 variants and a lone F-18 but not much else in the way of interesting military jets, the U.S. Thunderbirds and their F-16s aside.

In addition to military jets, the air display featured single engine aerobatics, the Canadian parachute team, some stunt flying (which was the shot posted yesterday of course) and a portable toilet powered by a jet engine.

More yet to come.